Commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,793,539 and 4,930,385 disclose a dispensing nozzle for serially dispensing plastic grocery bags or the like from a supply roll and wherein the supply roll is composed of bags which are serially joined along perforated severance lines. The nozzles disclosed in the referenced patents include a slot of zig-zag configuration, together with a thread-up opening communicating with the slot, and the nozzle is disclosed as being mounted in the bore of a grocery store check-out countertop, with the bag supply roll being positioned below the countertop. In use, the leading edge of the initial bag on the roll is manually threaded through the thread-up opening, and the leading edge is then grasped and moved into the slot. Thereafter, the bags may be individually delivered by pulling the bags upwardly, and the zig-zag slot exerts sufficient resistance so as to cause a severing of the leading bag from the immediately following bag along the perforated severance line.
While the dispensing nozzles disclosed in the above referenced patents represent a significant advance in the art, they possess certain limitations in some specific applications. For example, the slots are sensitive to changes in bag size and thickness of the plastic film, and since the slot is relatively short, the bags are necessarily wrinkled as they are withdrawn. Further, existing metal check-out counters cannot be readily fitted with the nozzles.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for serially dispensing flexible plastic bags of the described type, and which overcomes the above noted limitations of the prior nozzle designs.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for serially dispensing plastic bags and which includes a dispensing slot having a configuration which has sufficient width to accommodate the width of the bags being dispensed without significant wrinkling, and which provides a positive engagement with the bags to facilitate tearing off along the severance lines and while retaining the next bag in the slot in a ready-to-grasp position after separation.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a bag dispensing apparatus of the described type which is easily threaded with the initial bag of the supply roll, and which accommodates reasonable changes in bag size or plastic film thickness.